A Holiday Gift Guide for Hardcover Fans

An impressive selection of art books and oral histories for New Yorkers who love New York — anything to make holiday shopping for that difficult person a little easier. Here are some standouts.

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For the New Yorker Who Loves Glossies

When New York magazine began in 1968, it was unique: a brash conglomeration of ingenious writers, editors and graphic designers who generated narrative journalism that was so classic it became new again.

Sure, there were some misses. John Simon, for example, hated “Annie Hall,” and Nik Cohn’s cover story, “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” which inspired the movie “Saturday Night Fever,” proved to have been more of a nonfiction novel than pure fact.

But New York also spawned Ms. magazine and through Gloria Steinem and Gail Sheehy presaged feminism; it popularized “radical chic” and other cultural memes; and it punctured (and in some cases perpetuated) myths about who wielded power in a constantly changing city.

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“Sixth Avenue Between 43rd and 44th Streets,” from “I See a City: Todd Webb’s New York.”CreditTodd Webb Archive

For the New Yorker With a Mid-20th-Century Aesthetic

“I See a City: Todd Webb’s New York” (Thames & Hudson), by Sean Corcoran and Daniel Okrent, is an evocative post-World War II tribute to the photographer’s body of work in black-and-white.

“Webb didn’t need people to show the presence of life,” Mr. Okrent writes in this feast for historians and sentimentalists.

As Webb said himself: “Often, I find subject matter with no visible persons to be more peopled than the crowded street scene. Every window, doorway, street, building, every mark on a wall, every sign, has a human connotation.”

For the New Yorker With 2,000 Followers

“New York City on Instagram” (Rizzoli New York), edited by Dan Kurtzman, is an idiosyncratic 21st-century bookend to Webb’s collection in blazing color.

For the New Yorker Who Misses CBGB

New York’s place in rock ’n’ roll history is visualized in “New York Serenade” (Skira), which features photographs by Ciro Frank Schiappa and text by Michele Primi.

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For the New Yorker in the “Hamilton” Lottery

In “On Broadway: From ‘Rent’ to ‘Revolution’” (Rizzoli New York), Drew Hodges gloriously showcases posters and other ephemera, and peppers personal anecdotes by Broadway stars like Bernadette Peters and Lin-Manuel Miranda in between the visuals, to capture the last 20 years of musical theater.

For the Nostalgic New Yorker

In “The Writing on the Wall: Rediscovering New York City’s ‘Ghost Signs’” (Skyhorse Publishing), Ben Passikoff has photographed advertisements that have been painted on building facades throughout the years, some dating to the 1800s, and are slowly fading away.

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From “Cloud Chamber,” by Dan Ziskie.CreditDan Ziskie

For the Humanistic New Yorker

“Cloud Chamber” (Damiani) is a vibrant collection by Dan Ziskie, the actor and candid street photographer.

For the Romantic New Yorker

“How New York Breaks Your Heart” (Bloomsbury), by Bill Hayes, who wrote “Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me,” about his life with his partner, the neurologist Oliver Sacks, immortalizes ordinary people in the city that never sleeps.

For the Comedy-Loving New Yorker

Budd Friedman, with the author and journalist Tripp Whetsell, joins Billy Crystal, Robert Klein, Larry David, Richard Lewis, Jimmy Fallon, Bette Midler and others to recount the history of the Improv, Mr. Friedman’s pioneering laugh factory on West 44th Street.

The space, which opened in 1963, was originally intended to be an after-hours coffeehouse for Broadway performers, but soon became an incubator for budding comedians. When reading “The Improv: An Oral History of the Comedy Club That Revolutionized Stand-Up” (BenBella Books), you learn that Barry Manilow once played the piano there and Danny Aiello was the bouncer.

Larry David remembered his first visit in 1974: “We went in and as soon as we started watching the snow, I turned to my friend and said, ‘This doesn’t seem too hard.’”

For the New Yorker With Cross-Country Skis

Since 2010, Vivienne Gucwa, a travel photographer and writer, has been documenting winter in the city. “NY in the Snow: A Magical Vision of New York City” (Ilex) captures the best of the season — a briefly white blanket that imposes an eerie stillness — without the shoveling or sloshing.

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From “New York in Color,” by Nichole Robertson.CreditNichole Robertson

For the New Yorker Who Loves Detail

Decamping for Paris between stays in New York, Nichole Robertson writes, “short-circuited my preconceptions about what was worth photographing.” The subway tiles and traffic cones she previously dismissed as mundane are celebrated in “New York in Color” (Chronicle Books).

For the New Yorker Who Doesn’t Recognize the Bowery

Few neighborhoods have been transformed in socioeconomic status more profoundly than the Bowery. What was once Peter Stuyvesant’s farm became synonymous with saloons and sex, then devolved into the embodiment of Skid Row.

In “The Strange History of New York’s Oldest Street” (Skyhorse Publishing), Stephen Paul DeVillo summons up an eclectic cast, including Buffalo Bill, Big Tim Sullivan and Eddie Cantor to recall a fabled thoroughfare.

“The Bowery isn’t what it used to be,” he writes. “And in fact, it never was.”

For the Minimalist New Yorker

The title speaks for itself: “The Little Book of New York” (Chêne), by Christine Barrely, is a charming pocket-size guide to sites both familiar and not-so, accompanied by images of vintage colored postcards.

For the New Yorker Who Watches TCM

Relive your movie memories in “Starring the Plaza” (Beaufort Books), Patty Farmer’s pictorial paean to a grand hotel that inspired film scenes ranging from “North by Northwest” to “The Way We Were.”

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An illustration from “A Description of the New York Central Park.”CreditAlbert Fitch Bellows

For the Nature-Loving New Yorker

Many of the books mentioned above evoke nostalgia for a city lost to topsy-turvy growth governed by urban planners and developers. “A Description of the New York Central Park” (New York University Press) is a welcome reminder that the natural pace of change is typically more gradual.

This facsimile edition of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s original vision recounted in 1869 by the art critic Clarence C. Cook explores how a provident man-made public works project was transformed into an enduring work of nature.